[Talk-us] Imports and Mass Edits in the US

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 17.12.2012 18:47, Serge Wroclawski wrote:
> I'm suggesting a different approach, one where you have a proposed
> importer saying "I have this data", they then take it to a
> committee/working group who has been blessed by the community to help
> with this process.

I'm keen on the "import process" including a number of "exit lanes" - it 
should ask questions like:
questions like:

* How will this import improve the community mapping effort?

* Would it perhaps be better to "mix and match" this data at the 
rendering stage, rather than adding it to OSM, since this data is 
unlikely to be edited by anyone anyway? (An extreme example for this is 
height contours - nobody would dream of uploading them into OSM, yet 
many a novice will mistakenly think "it has to go into OSM to be on the 
map, right?")

* Would it perhaps be better to stick this data into a WMS/WFS/Snapshot 
server/... and offer it to the mapper community as an additional data 
source instead of importing it outright?

I think that, when confronted with new third-party data sources, many 
people have a knee-jerk "let's import that" reaction which experienced 
OSMers should counterbalance by asking questions like the above.

I would be happy if your working group would embrace this idea and find 
a name that doesn't explicitly say "imports" - what we need is people 
who help with the responsible use of third party data for the benefit of 
OSM - which might occasionally mean an import, but many other things as 
well.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"